The study represents the first effort to quantify the global effects of human activity on the daily activity patterns of wildlife. Its results highlight the powerful and widespread process by which animals alter their behavior alongside people: human disturbance is creating a more nocturnal natural world.

University of California Berkeley Ph.D. candidate and lead author Kaitlyn Gaynor, said:

“While we expected to find a trend towards increased wildlife nocturnality around people, we were surprised by the consistency of the results around the world. Animals responded strongly to all types of human disturbance, regardless of whether people actually posed a direct threat, suggesting that our presence alone is enough to disrupt their natural patterns of behavior.”